My Chemical Romance has reportedly caved under legal pressure from the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and agreed to stop using backup dancers in look-alike uniforms at their concerts.
The NFL cheerleaders sued the legendary emo band last week, claiming it was violating their trademark rights by dressing dancers in similar blue-and-white uniforms to stage a faux firefight as part of a show set in a dystopian American future.
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Legal experts told Billboard that My Chemical Romance would likely be protected against those claims by the First Amendment’s protections for free speech. But according to a report Tuesday (Oct. 27) from TMZ, the band wasn’t willing to fight that legal battle.
The outlet says the cheerleaders and the band have reached an agreement in which My Chemical Romance will continue to perform the same cheerleader routine on stage — just not with the dancers dressed quite so similarly to the Cowboys squad.
Neither reps for the band nor a lawyer for the cheerleaders immediately returned requests for comment on Tuesday.
The case, filed in Texas state court by the cheerleaders’ parent company Pro Silver Star, came after My Chemical Romance performed the cheerleader bit during the first two performances of a five-show residency at the Hollywood Bowl for the 20th anniversary of The Black Parade.
When the reported settlement was reached, the cheerleaders had been asking a judge to issue an immediate restraining order barring the band from continuing to use the uniforms, including in the final two shows in Los Angeles this weekend.
“Silver Star is not litigious, and it takes no issue with MCR’s music, its artistic ambitions, or any message defendants seek to convey,” wrote Alex Spiro, the well-known celebrity litigator representing the cheerleaders. “Silver Star does not ask defendants to change their setlist, narrative, politics, choreography, or even their decision to put gun-toting performers on stage.
“Silver Star asks only that those performers not wear the DCC Uniform while doing it,” the company added. “The universe of alternative costume designs is effectively unlimited.”
